SINCE Brighton’s meeting with Tottenham became the first match in England’s top four divisions to be postponed in mid-December, 73 games in the Premier League and Football League have been called off during the current third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Quite simply, that number should now be 74. The EFL’s decision to insist that Middlesbrough play at Sheffield United tomorrow lunchtime isn’t just an aberration that brings the integrity of the Championship into question, it is a call that puts player welfare at risk, makes a complete mockery of any suggestion that the league is applying the same parameters to all clubs and flies in the face of all Government guidance attempting to slow the spread of Covid.

‘Caught up in a Covid outbreak at your workplace? Never mind, follow the EFL’s lead and plough on regardless’. ‘Coughing and spluttering when you know a number of close contacts have tested positive but you yourself have produced a negative test result? Fine, do as the EFL say and get yourself into a crowded dressing room and then run around with 21 other people for an hour-and-half’. ‘Do as the Government want you to do and get yourself vaccinated with a booster shot? That’s fine then, the EFL say you have to play even though the game would be postponed if you and your team-mates were unvaccinated because you’d be isolating’.

Having seen a host of matches called off over the Christmas period, and with their refusal to publish clear, verified evidence of what other clubs have done to force a postponement having backed them into something of a corner, the EFL now appear hellbent on getting as many games on as possible.

That’s fine. Teams should be forced to play when they are clearly capable of putting out a squad that resembles anything close to their strongest selection. It is also a moot point whether injured players should be counted when absentees are totted up, or whether only those with a positive Covid test result or who are isolating as the result of one should be regarded as being relevant.

None of that matters when it comes to Middlesbrough though. Since winning at Blackpool on Wednesday night, Boro have recorded 19 Covid positive test results amongst their players are staff. Nine relate to players, seven of whom would have been in the starting line-up at Bramall Lane. To make it clear, we are not talking about untried youngsters who would have been fleshing out the bench.

The other ten test results relate to senior figures within the backroom team. Assistant manager Alan Knill, a first-team coach, a goalkeeping coach, two data analysts. As Chris Wilder joked at his press conference today, as things stand, he might well find himself laying out the strips and driving the team bus.

How on earth can the EFL decide that is not sufficient to force the postponement of a game? The governing body’s response seems to have been that while Boro do not have sufficient first-team players in the building at the moment to be able to fulfil their woefully-opaque requirements, they would have if they recalled their players that are currently out on loan.

What a ridiculous way to try to fashion a solution. So, after playing the full 90 minutes of Sheffield Wednesday’s 5-0 defeat at Sunderland last night, Lewis Wing should be expected to hop across to Bramall Lane to play for Boro tomorrow, even though Wilder almost certainly will not want him in the second half of the season.

Rumarn Burrell is on loan at Kilmarnock, but has not been getting a game. Boro might well want to recall next month in order to send him somewhere else for the second half of the season. If he has to come on as a substitute at Sheffield United though, he will have played for two clubs and will have to spend the remainder of the campaign kicking his heels in Boro’s reserves. How is that helping player development?

The EFL have got this badly wrong. Would they have made the same call if tomorrow’s game was not being screened live on Sky Sports? Who knows. Plenty of supporters will be drawing their own conclusion. Would they have come to the same conclusion if it wasn’t Middlesbrough, victims of an infamous three-point penalty for failing to field a team in 1997? Again, fans on social media have had their say.

Personally, I don’t think you have to look for conspiracy theories to explain today’s remarkable decision. The EFL have been inept from the moment coronavirus arrived to disrupt its footballing schedule. They have repeatedly delivered blurred directives and made dreadful calls. Unfortunately, for Middlesbrough, this is simply the worst of all.


* This article was published before the decision was made to postpone Middlesbrough's match with Sheffield United.